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	<div class="headline"><span class="chapter_number">Chapter 1: </span><span class="chapter_name">Introduction</span></div>
	<div class="blurb">So you want to speak Japanese. Well, I've got some good news and some bad news. The good news is that Japanese is an incredibly interesting language with very few basic sounds and a straightforward grammar.</div>
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        <p>The bad news? If your first language is English, you
        routinely make thousands of language sounds that don't even exist in Japanese,
        and Japanese and English grammar are about as different as sushi and sandwiches.
        But what's life without a little challenge, right?</p>

        <p>But there's a good side even to the bad news. On the
        pronunciation front, Japanese sounds are few and pure. When I say pure, I mean
        that there aren't so-called glides like there are in English. A glide is when
        you start out making one vowel sound and then ever-so-subtly glide into a
        different one. For example, listen to yourself carefully as you say the word
        &quot;no.&quot; You'll notice that you don't make just an &quot;oh&quot; sound,
        but you tack a little &quot;ooh&quot; sound onto the end. You can verify this
        by noticing that your lips actually move, which would be unnecessary for just
        one simple vowel sound. If you don't believe me, look in the mirror and say it
        slowly, because you definitely do it. </p>

        <p>These glides are just one aspect of English that give it a
        large total number of language sounds. When I talk about language sounds, I'm
        talking about the one-syllable building blocks that you can use to make any
        word in a given language. Care to hazard a guess at how many basic sound
        ingredients there are in English? It varies by dialect, but one estimate puts
        the number at over 8000. </p>

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